


And You Give

by i_claudia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:23:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone thinks they’re doomed to failure. Harry’s determined to prove everyone wrong, but sometimes even he has doubts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And You Give

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/16241.html). (25 December 2008)

_“...Baby we fell hard,_  
Bruised our bodies skinned our knees and our hearts.  
And I got sick, yeah but no one could tell.  
Now I drink your love, drink it right from the well.”  
And You Give, Matthew Barber 

 

No one expected it to last. Their friends, the few who actually knew about it, were against the idea from the very beginning. When they’d gotten a place together in a Muggle neighborhood, their friends washed their hands of the whole affair quite spectacularly. Harry’s memories of breaking that particular news were full of shattered glass and the sharp, crunching sound of a fist going through the wall.

The press knew nothing about any of it and Harry was damn well going to keep it that way, but if any rumors had managed to make their way into the headlines probably the entire Wizarding world would think the two of them were doomed from the start.

They would probably be right, Harry decided, watching Draco work himself into a frothing anger.

“...you never cared a _fig_ about what happened to us, and now you have the gall to say something like that?”

Draco was savage to the point of untouchable beauty when he was angry, not that Harry would ever tell him that. He stood facing Harry across the bedroom, his hair mussed past any sort of definable order, red flags high on both cheeks, his narrow chest heaving with his quick, shallow breath. His hands were clenched at his side, his knuckles slowly turning white from the tension. 

Harry, still sitting on the bed, hugged his arms across his chest in an effort to warm himself and tried his best to look contrite. “I didn’t mean it to come out sounding like that,” he began, but Draco cut him off.

“Either you meant it or you didn’t, Potter,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t lie and expect me to trust you at the same time.”

“I’m not _lying_!” Harry said, rolling up onto his knees and sitting back on his heels. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Why won’t you just believe me? Maybe I don’t understand it entirely, but I’m trying; doesn’t that count?”

There was a beat of silence, and Harry could hear the rain lashing down, hitting the window with a hollow angry sound. 

“No, you don’t understand, do you,” Draco said softly, crossing his arms, and Harry should have known, should have known not to listen to anything he said next because Draco was most dangerous when he withdrew, when his eyes went flinty and his voice got soft, as soft as Lucius’ used to be. “You can’t understand; you never _had_ parents to worry about.”

A strange buzzing filled Harry’s ears. He reeled, suddenly light-headed, and before he could really process the fact that he was moving he was halfway across the room, backing Draco into a corner. There was a brief flash of – something, maybe regret – in Draco’s eyes, but it was gone before Harry could really tell. He seized Draco, sinking his fingers into the muscled flesh of his arms and pinning him against the wall.

“Take that back,” Harry ground out.

Draco gazed stonily up at him. “Or what?” he snapped. “You’ll arrest me?” 

His lips moved with words too low for Harry to hear, and Harry yelped, letting go and leaping away from Draco as shocks ran up through both arms.

Glaring, Harry rubbed his hands, trying to dispel the sharp tingling. “You didn’t have to do that,” he said, letting the heat of his anger curl and go sour beneath his words.

Draco snorted, turning away. “Really?” he said spitefully, grabbing his wand off of the little nightstand. “You could kill me right now and no one would ever think twice about it. Why shouldn’t I defend myself?”

Harry stepped forward, trying to find the right words, the words that would make this all go away, but Draco spun and leveled his wand at him. 

“You stay there,” he said, cold iron still solid beneath the low softness of his voice. “Don’t follow me. Pansy will get my things later.”

And with that he was gone, slamming the front door behind him, leaving Harry standing in the empty bedroom listening to the rain beat down outside. 

The sheets were still rumpled, Harry noticed distantly; probably they were still warm as well. He could crawl back into the bed, curl up and breathe in Draco’s smell and try to make himself believe Draco was only in the next room, that he had only stepped out for a minute to buy another tin of biscuits or some milk, or maybe some of the awful too-strong coffee he refused to drink but still made every morning because he thought Harry liked it. Harry always drank the stuff; he never had the heart to tell Draco it was the worst coffee he’d ever had, worse than the Dursleys’ instant coffee, worse even than the coffee in the break room at work after it had been sitting around all day and had turned so thick a spoon could stand upright in it.

Then he blinked, tried to breathe around the strange new stone lodged in his chest, and choked. He slid down the wall to his knees, bending over until his forehead rested on the floor. Draco was gone, maybe this time for good; gone with nothing but his wand, as if he thought all his things were too polluted by Harry’s touch, Harry’s smell...

Harry jerked his head up in realization. Draco hadn’t taken his coat. Draco was outside, shirtless, and he’d probably freeze to death in the freezing rain. Harry leapt up and tugged a blanket from the bed before pelting out the door after Draco. He didn’t allow himself to think that maybe Draco had an ounce of common sense and had Apparated away despite the Muggles around. Draco possessed absolutely no common sense when it came to things like that, he told himself – being raised by wealth and house elves did that to a wizard.

The rain was coming down harder than he’d expected; he was soaked within seconds. His new pyjama bottoms sagged and stuck to his legs, the red silk ruined. He peered around the darkening street, trying to keep his wet hair from hanging in his face and cursing the fact that he’d forgotten to grab his glasses. There was a pale, vaguely man-shaped blur that seemed to be sitting on the pavement in front of him under a street light, and Harry walked toward it, hesitant.

“Draco?”

“Go away, Potter,” the blur answered, but it sounded dejected. Harry stood behind Draco, shifting slightly from foot to foot.

“I brought you a blanket,” Harry told him, squinting and wishing he’d remembered to put on his glasses. “You forgot your coat.”

Draco didn’t move. “Great bloody Gryffindor,” he muttered.

Harry dropped the hand that held the now-sodden blanket, looking at it a bit mournfully. “I’m sorry about grabbing you,” he said. “And I really am sorry about your parents. I don’t care if you think I’m lying. I never wanted them to go that way, no matter what I thought of your father.”

Draco said nothing, and Harry started to think that maybe he was pushing his luck and should just drop the blanket and learn to let go before he got himself hexed. As he went to drape the blanket over Draco’s shoulders and leave, though, Draco grabbed his wrist with one wet, icy hand.

“I know,” he said without looking at Harry. “It just becomes... difficult... at Christmas.”

“I know,” said Harry, knowing it was as much of an apology as he was going to get. He waited, and when Malfoy didn’t let go of his arm, tugged at him slightly. “You know, it’s kind of cold out,” he said, trying not to think about how his feet might be frozen to the pavement. “We could go back inside, if you wanted. It’s warmer.”

Draco snorted, but before Harry could completely resign himself to frozen feet, he allowed Harry to help him up. He turned around, lifting his face up to study Harry. “It’s probably always going to be like this,” he said, not moving when Harry tried to pull him closer. “The past isn’t going to magically disappear because you want it to.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t want the past to disappear,” he said, lacing their fingers together. He glanced down at Draco’s left forearm and then back up, leaning down and in until their foreheads were almost touching. “Maybe I’m crazy but I like you anyway, even if you used to be an utter prat.” Looking down through his fringe, he caught the tail-end of the small smile Draco tried to smother.

“A _prat_?” Draco’s voice had an edge to it, but he tilted his face up, his eyes falling shut. “I was slightly more than a prat.”

“I don’t care,” Harry said, and slipped his free hand around Draco’s waist, pulling him in for a soft kiss. 

Draco pulled back from the chaste press of lips with a shiver. “The neighbors are probably staring out their windows,” he whispered.

“Let them stare,” replied Harry, grinning. “I have a gorgeous prat the likes of which they can only dream about to share Christmas with. I’d be staring if I were them.”

“What is it with you and ‘prat’?” Draco demanded. “I’ll have you know I’m descended from a long line of wealthy and decidedly non-prat-like wizards, whereas _you_ are merely a plebian Gryffindor.”

“Your ancestors, ‘whereas’, and plebian, all in the same sentence,” Harry remarked, cocking an eyebrow. “Definitely sounds like a prat to me.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “That’s it,” he announced, marching back up to their front door. “You’re going to have to pay for that.”

Harry’s grin grew wider as Draco pulled him along. “Do I get to decide how to make it up to you?”

Draco scowled. “No. Now get inside before I freeze to death.”

Harry followed him through the front door, shutting it firmly behind him. They _were_ probably doomed from the beginning in this – whatever it was – he thought again, but damned if he wasn’t going to try to prove everyone wrong.

 

_“I need your love like the air I breathe_  
I need it more than you could ever believe.  
And you give, and you give  
Give it to me.” 


End file.
